(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

Earlier this week in The Australian Financial Review, Phil Coorey had an interesting little story about whether the government would order the Future Fund to lighten its investments in fossil fuels or “better align the fund’s investment strategy with the legislated goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050”.

Behind the story is an interesting question: why does the government have to talk to the fund — which is independent of the government, correctly — about what investments it has? Why can’t it just look up the fund’s 2021-22 annual report, or its September quarter updates, to find out the investments of the fund?

It can’t. Nor can the media, or the public servant beneficiaries of the fund, nor investors in the fund — which is every single taxpayer. The Future Fund doesn’t identify individual investments.

It identifies areas or sectors, sure — for example 8.3% of its portfolio at September 30, or more than $16 billion, was invested in “Australian equities”, a further $25.5 billion in developed economy markets and $10.67 billion in emerging markets. There’s also $35 billion invested in private equity and $35.6 billion in “alternatives”.

But good luck finding which equities, which private companies. It is much easier to find out the Australian investments by the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund — the gigantic Norges fund run by the Norwegian government — than the $241 billion of investments overseen by the Future Fund.

According to its December 2021 annual investment report, the Norges fund had investments in most of the 200 companies of the ASX 200, as well as some smaller companies, with US$1.3 billion invested in the Commonwealth Bank, just over US$1 billion in the ANZ, more than US$1.4 billion of CSL shares, more than US$600 million in Macquarie Group, over US$725 million in the National Australia Bank, US$739 million in Wesfarmers and US$691 million of Westpac shares.

Interestingly, the fund only owned US$186 million worth of BHP shares and US$421 million of Rio Tinto shares. BHP has sold its oil and gas assets to Woodside, but still has thermal coal in NSW.

When it comes to pure fossil fuel plays, Norges didn’t have any shares in Woodside, Santos or Whitehaven, nor Beach Energy, another oil and gas group partially controlled by Kerry Stokes’ Seven Group Holdings.

Not merely is it easier for us to find out what the Norwegians have invested in: fund managers with US$100 million or more invested in the US sharemarket have to provide four reports a year, 45 days after the end of the quarter. And like Australia, the US requires the holders of all stakes of 5% or more to be disclosed (10 days after the quarter in the US, three days in Australia).

So we can keep regularly updated on what some of the world’s biggest investors, like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and its A$454 billion treasure chest, have put money into. We know how many Apple shares Berkshire owns and how many Occidental Petroleum shares it bought in October and how many BYD shares it sold in Hong Kong this month.

But we don’t know if the Future Fund owns any Occidental, Apple or BYD shares, or Tesla or Twitter shares.

It’s an absurd lack of transparency in a fund that belongs to all of us, not to its chair Peter Costello, even if he did help set it up. The basic transparency that others take for granted, and which would allow debates on issues like whether we should be investing in fossil fuels, is wholly absent.

Which prompts the question — what, exactly, are taxpayers not being told?